What I liked about AVATAR

I am a movie fan, not a critic. That makes my life easier, coz I see the good things in every movie. Sure, some movies bore me and once in a while, I feel like I could have directed it better [sigh!], but in general, I like movies not for the story, not acting, not dancing, not the songs or soundtrack, not cinematography, not choreography..no..none of that.

I like a movie for the experience – the whole piece. So if one of the elements performed a little less and others made up for it, that’s okay with me.

I liked the Avatar experience. Sure the 3D glasses could have had a better fit [particularly on top of my regular glasses], but that’s okay too.

The experience was immersive and inclusive, like any good movie experience is meant to be. 3D helped me being in Pandora, nearly touch the optic fibre spores [Eyra] and avoid the arrows and missiles. I was talking to my wife, sitting next to me, less frequently during the movie than ever. I didnt want to go out for my pop corn for too long. [in fact, for once, the theatre could have done away with the intermission, it breaks the dream sequence].

I also liked the fact that the title of the movie is a Sanskrit word, the inspiration from Hindu mythology, and there are many similarities between characters and settings of the movie and what we have been taught in ancient Indian mythology – the monkey-tailed Na’Vi’s are Ramayan’s vanar sena, Banshee is Jatayu, the body complexion of the indigenous people is blue [Krishna's and Indra's colour, just richer], not white, the bow and arrow as the primary weapon as always depicted in the Ramayan and the Mahabharat, home tree signifies so many ‘holy’ trees of Hindu mythology. Are there others? Perhaps.

I also liked the fact that humans are shown as aliens and are finally driven away with all their bad machines. That Jake Sully is a bit like Vibhishan who defects to the side of the good and becomes a double crossing agent working to save Pandora was okay.

I didnt like the reference Colonel Quaritch makes at the Na’vi’s as terrorists. “We must fight terror with terror”. That sounded more like George Bush.

I would forgive that one,

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Houston Is Largest City to Elect Openly Gay Mayor – NYTimes.com http://ping.fm/UlSNY

A Different Meaning of Asset

Years ago, when I was I think 2 or 3 years into working, I got a feeling I was getting bored in my job @ Lintas Delhi. So almost unwittingly I developed a yearly ritual of going to my boss and telling him that I wanted to quit the company.

I think it was Preet [Preet K S Bedi, who was initially my super boss as the office GM, then took me directly under him because I was a problem child], who told me, “How can you even think of leaving? You are an asset!”, in one of those yearly “I want to quit” discussions. My chest filled with pride and my ego swelled up. Wow, a 3 year old guy an asset to Lintas!

It took me a full year or so to suspect that what he perhaps meant was “how can YOU leave? You are a fixed asset, like a wall or a chair fixed to the wall!” I went and asked him and he smiled.

Jokes apart, as I start the first day of my 12th year @ SMG, I wonder what Preet had really meant and whether today’s young people suspect me of meaning something like that, when I talk to them.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

The Joy of Road Block of all kinds

The reactions to today’s brochurisation of TOI by Volkswagen have mostly been negative. Is it only a case of sour grapes? Why are marketing people so fascinated with size, noise and domination? Is it because Marketing is so full of men?

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Are people in Marketing and Communication Industry too egoistic and delusional for their own good?

Work in Progress.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Social tools making us unsocial?

The other day, at a friend’s party, someone commented that so many people we know twitter about even the smallest ‘experiences’ and have therefore become ‘reporters’ that is it getting a bit uneasy to talk frankly even amongst friends, because you dont know who is sending a tweet at that very moment about what you just said, or how you behaved, when your guards were down. Put extremely, this means ‘we cannot trust friends to keep our innocent secrets confined to them any longer’.

Fascinating aspect of the social tools. If our friends stop being honest foe fear of being ’scooped’, would we eventually become un-social?

Getting attention 101

Today I was on a panel sponsored by Times Private Treaties at the IIJS [India International Jewellery Show]. It was titled CEO Roundtable: “Building a Vibrant Domestic Jewellery Business”. The panel discussed the role of branding in domestic jewellery business. Prasad Kapre, the moderator, made a comment after the discussion that the audience was not only thin, but lacked participation from people who need to think about branding the most – private jewellers with a family name.

Mr. Ashok Minawala said the title should have been something like ‘how to grow revenue of your family brand multifold’ , something like that. He said family businesses dont want to be told they dont have a brand. Period.

I liked it. Simple and powerful thinking.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Why agencies?

Met the intelligent folks from e4m – Nawal, Amit and Noor – this morning. Told them what I have always felt about agency rankings. Why are agencies evregreen targets for perception surveys and size rankings? Sure, size is important, but then how is 2009 different from 1990?

Why are we clinging on to the measures of the exposure era, as if our lives depended on it? Will our narcisism and introvertedness ever end?

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Amongst the most important buttons every website has to have soon..

important icons of the future

Where did civility go?

The guy sitting next to me on the flight this Wednesday picked up my newspapers without even a simple ‘may I?’, tried solving the crossword, tore the papers with his clumsiness n put it non-chalantly in his own seat pocket…am I just mean or was he wrong?

Blogged with the Flock Browser